LG Optimus F Series pictures and hands-on: F7 and F5

LG's F Series of smartphones comes from the company's heritage in 4G LTE technologies, Pocket-lint was told during a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They are part of an affordable mid-range series of devices that feature 4G connectivity, and we also learnt that they will definitely be coming to the UK in the second half of 2013.

The daddy of the two handsets in the range is the LG Optimus F7. The handset is running on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and ships with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. On top of that, it sports a rather nice-looking 4.7-inch True HD IPS 312ppi display, which is just slightly less dense in the pixel sense than, say, the iPhone 5 - albeit a lot bigger.

In the hand, the phone sizes up at 131.7 x 68.2 x 9.6mm, making it as lightweight and pocketable as you would expect a current-gen smartphone to be. Then there is 8GB of internal memory with microSD expandability up to 32GB to keep storage covered.

A healthy 2GB of RAM keeps another box checked on the Optimus F7's wow factor list, although it is becoming more commonplace in smartphones now and should ensure top of the line performance when multi-tasking. Keeping the phone running is a 2,540 mAh battery, which should mean very good battery life, especially when you consider the lack of a quad-core processor.

Finally, in the photography department, we have an 8-megapixel camera on the rear and a 1.3-megapixel snapper on the front. We imagine the back shooter will be 1080p-capable, with the front only 720p when it comes to video.

As for the F5, processor speed drops down a touch to 1.2GHz but remains dual-core. It is of course a 4G phone just like the F7 and also benefits from Android 4.1.2. The real difference between the two is in the screen. At 4.3-inches, the IPS display just isn't as nice as what the F7 has to offer.

The phone is a touch more compact at 126.0 x 64.5 x 9.3mm in size, but then it loses a physical home button and replaces it with backlit touch sensitive keys. RAM also takes a hit and is dropped down to 1GB, as is built-in storage, which is 8GB but with a microSD expansion.

Finally, the F5's camera also cuts back, with a resolution of 5-megapixels on the rear and 1.3-megapixels on the front. The whole of the F5 is powered by a 2,150mAh battery, which isn't quite as tasty as the F7 but due to the smaller screen, should perform just as well.

What's probably most exciting about the Optimus F Series, though, is that both phones will probably allow you to jump on the 4G bandwagon for less dosh than other flagship phones. And that's got to be a good thing, surely?

Our senior ed of news and features has been a tech and games journalist for more than 27 years, and has been with Pocket-lint for over five. Rik has edited a number of videogame magazines in the past, was deputy editor of Home Cinema Choice, and his TV career included stints as co-presenter of Channel 4's Gamesmaster and Sky One’s Games World.